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Kung Fu Panda
Looking after sick children can be unrewarding in that you’re offering waiter service - but without the tips. Anybody watching the latest Shrek episode, ‘Shrek the Third’, on DVD, and I have been subjected to it – about 20 times, will know that a future release from DreamWorks will be ‘Kung Fu Panda’ starring Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Ian Macshane, Jack Black, and Jackie Chan. OK, it’s a pretty weak lead-in to a blog on Panda’s Internet Security 2008 package, but that’s the best link I could find!
Panda’s Internet Security 2008 (IS 2008) is identical to the corporate package and differs only in how it’s deployed and managed. Differentiators in the market for products like these are the signature databases along with the heuristic engines designed to discover malware for which signatures are not yet available.
In fact a few days ago, some security software firms banded together to form the AntiMalware Testing Taskforce. The core group includes AV-Test, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Panda and Symantec, with other firms like Checkpoint, PC Tools, Sunbelt and Virus Bulletin supporting the testing methodology. This group will define a new test methodology based on behavioural analysis. More security companies have been invited to join next January, the objective being to design a testing plan to reflect competing products capabilities.
Panda IS 2008 is a powerful system, but for home users the set up and activation which involves client number, username and password and activation code could confuse slightly. There are also a fair number of levels for users to be configured to get the best out of the system as well. That said, when all is set up, it offers a lot of functionality. Anti-phishing, anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, data backup, parental control and many more. I'll be giving a further update on Panda IS 2008 in the new year.
Remember the original TV series of Kung Fu starring David Carradine? Here’s a quote from the original pilot, courtesy of from Master Kan, teacher of Carridine’s character, Kwai Chang Caine : "From the crane we learn grace and self-control. The snake teaches us suppleness and rhythmic endurance. The praying mantis teaches us speed and patience. And from the tiger, tenacity. And from the dragon we learn to ride the wind."
The Chinese new year begins on 7 February and it’s the year of the rat, so watch out for those phishers and spammers next year.
But what of the Panda - well, "Learn well the ways of the Panda, that it may protect your system on the eternal quest for knowledge on the Internet."
Acronis – Greek god of system imaging
In 2003 Symantec gobbled up PowerQuest, the company that produced PartitionMagic, DriveImage, and V2i Protector. I still use the desktop version of V2i Protector, but have recently got hold of some equivalent Acronis packages, specifically version 11 desktop, server and home versions of their True Image software. We’ll be putting out a review of the desktop/server suites in the New Year, but for now, here’s my thoughts on the home user package.
It looks pretty similar to V2i Protector both GUI-wise and with respect to the functionality. However, it does have extras which make it relatively easy for home users to protect their systems. It has a ‘clean up’ disk tool, which flushes all the caches and temporary files, so if you have a couple of gigabytes worth of web content gumming up the ‘C’ drive, this can get rid of it prior to making an image of your OS. It does differential backups as well, so if you’re used to continually trying out new software, it means, for example, you could apply Microsoft's monthly patch bundle and do an differential backup. If something breaks, roll back to before it broke - simple. True Image can also securely clean up your disk, if you’re selling it on and you don’t want hackers digging out all those credit card details.
How long does it take? Well, imaging a 12GB XP Professional system took around 50 minutes, but I did choose to compress the image to the highest degree possible. The compressed backup only used 50 percent of the space taken up by the operating system on the C drive, and it's best to store these images on a network drive. Restoring the image took just over 20 minutes. An incremental backup after installing Microsoft's December patches took
If you think you have a virus or some malware, it may be quicker to re-image your system rather than run a virus scan, since some scans take significantly longer than the re-imaging process. Plus, you can be sure that you’ve got rid of whatever your system picked up - unless of course, the virus writer has somehow managed to infect your BIOS.
Another neat feature is the Try&Decide mode. Here, Acronis sets aside part of your disk as a ‘Secure Zone’ and writes, in effect, a virtual OS to this area, so if anything nasty happens – you can roll back. This feature looks to be tailor-made if you’re planning on visiting any dodgy websites or installing applications of unknown provenance.
All in all, a pretty impressive and comprehensive package.
Warning : if you’re playing games on your system and you’ve just got through that phenomenally hard level – make an incremental backup, because if you have to roll back to an earlier image of your system, you’ll loose the current state of your trek through the game, and have to battle your way through that level all over again!
Is Yoko Ono a network administrator?
IT Week is always on the look out for nifty network management tools that can save you time or have a different way of doing things. So I was punted the name of a firm offering a free suite of network management tools called PacketTrap Networks. After downloading the near 7MB executable and installing it, if you want to run it you have to create a PacketTrap account – standard stuff, your name, email address, company name etc.
On the site itself are testimonials from people who have used PacketTrap’s pt360 Tool Suite – but one from Yoko Ono (see piccy)? Has Yoko Ono become a network admin? Well she has wrestled with some of mankind’s most intractable problems – world peace – for instance. Does network management qualify as one of the world's most intractable problems? Depends whose network I suppose. A nice spoof – and there are also testimonials from Jean-Paul Sartre and one PFC Gump.
PacketTrap will be releasing a Pro version in Q1 2008 with extra functionality, like Cisco configuration management, better application and server monitoring, more open source and third party integration, better network discovery and syslog server capabilities.
Firing up the PacketTrap's free pt360 suite after you've got your activation code reveals a fairly simple and clean interface, with a collection of 13 tools. Three types of 'pinging' tools – standard ping scan, enhanced ping, and graphical ping. After these there's a DNS Audit and Whois tools, before the scanning tools for port, MAC, simple network management protocol (SNMP) and Windows management instrumentation (WMI). You can also use the Wake-on-LAN tool to boot up a device and monitor it and there's also a Traceroute tool and a TFTP server. Finally the Traffic Jam tool lets you generate network traffic to a device on a selected port with a specific protocol. All in all, a nifty set of tools – even Yoko rates them.
Picture: Using OQO's HSDPA UMPC
OQO's new version of its Model e2 UMPC is already shipping, and here's a (slightly blurry) picture to prove it. OQO kindly left this model with me to try out when they dropped in to our offices where IT Week Labs is located.
As you can see, the unit is almost indistinguishable from the original Model e2, which we reviewed back in October. It is very slightly heavier (but not so you would notice) and has a new antenna to support HSDPA – the high-speed 'wireless broadband' version of the 3G mobile networks.
The antenna can be extended out from the top right corner of the case, in a manner that makes it look like some kind of spy gizmo that James Bond might have used in the sixties. This is theoretically to boost the signal if reception is poor, but it seemed to have little extra effect when I tried it, and the antenna looks like it might easily snap if the user isn't careful.
From our central London office I managed to get a 3.6Mbit/s connection on T-Mobile, as reported by the Novatel MobiLink Network Connection Manager tool installed on the OQO. Using some of the free broadband speed test tools available on the web, the HSDPA connection was rated at various speeds up to 688kbit/s, which is roughly comparable with what you would see with a 1Mbit/s home broadband connection.
Using the device backed up this finding – it seemed reasonably fast when browsing web sites, but not as fast as you would expect from using a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection. I even accessed one or two web-based applications and found performance acceptable, if not great.
Of course, get away from metropolitan areas and performance will almost certainly be worse than this, and will drop back to standard 3G or even GPRS the further away you get from a big city. I haven't tested this with the OQO so far, but have frequently found 3G coverage to be patchy outside of London.
This extra wireless capability does not really make the OQO a rival for a smartphone. The device I tested did not have the ability to make voice calls, although there is nothing preventing you from installing Skype or some other voice-over-IP client and using this instead.
iPhone tips
Wow.
I don't usually pop into the labs - for obvious reasons,
but since taking part in one of the IT Week reviews, I've had to put myself
among the morlocks and see what all this testing malarky is about. I am no
white coated 'under the hood fiddler' but I have had an iPhone for a couple of
weeks and am having a fine old time with it.
There are a couple of things to bear in mind when using
your iPhone. Firstly, don't use it in any built up metropolitan areas. This has
nothing to do with the strength of the connection, just the fact that you might
as well walk around with a sign on your head saying, "mug me, I am a
fool".
Secondly, unless you feel like filing them down to points
it is going to take you a while to get your fingers accustomed to the small key
spaces on offer to you.
Any person using the phone for the first time suffers from
what I call "clumsy starfish syndrome" – whereby you have the
necessary number of digits, but no real control over what you are doing with
them. It can make for some frustrating texting experiences.
Finally, get used to some envy. People are going to love
the browser.
With this in mind, remember to clear out your cookies.
PCs burn up the watts - even when switched off
In a review of the HP Compaq dc7800 published in IT Week today, I measured the power consumption of this compact new desktop PC to see if it used less energy than rival systems. It did just that, using a maximum 78W in our tests, whereas a standard system can easily top 200W.
However, I was surprised to see just how much energy the system used even when it was switched off. Just connected to the mains, the dc7800 and its mains adapter consumed over 9W. Multiplied across a building full of PCs, this might add up to a considerable waste of energy overnight and at the weekend, even if users respond to calls to turn their system off before they leave work.
And this is in a system designed for power efficiency. A standard mini-tower PC I measured was found to consume at least 21W when turned off.
However, as I pointed out in the print review of the HP system, it is not practicable for most businesses to introduce a policy of unplugging equipment when not in use, because IT departments need to able to remote boot systems for after-hours maintenance and updates.
Is there anything that enterprises can do to reduce this waste of power, or is it all down to the equipment manufacturer to design kit to be as efficient as possible, even when in the off state?
